Odds are you took a vacation sometime in the past year. And, for many of you who did, you may have done an all-inclusive trip that featured the flights, transfers, hotel and food/drink all rolled into one price and package, hence, the package holiday. Others of you might have taken a cruise, which, in a way, is a floating package holiday. The advantages of this type of trip are obvious; there’s little guesswork involved, everything is done for you, there are few or no hidden costs, etc. And they can be fun and relaxing. And they can be even more fun if its a group of you and your friends who go on the trip together. Usually for something like that, a group uses a travel agency or a large firm that handles group travel.
Take the trip Tom arranged for a group in England. The group had a common purpose in mind since they were all people of the Christian faith. They wanted to attend a convention of sorts that catered to people like them. The thing was, Tom wasn’t a travel agent. He was somewhat affiliated with the group, and, sometimes, that’s the way these things get organized. Someone in the group takes charge and makes all the needed travel arrangements. And that job fell to Tom. The other thing that was unique about the trip was that this group of friends turned out to be almost 500 souls. Yet, Tom managed to shepherd all those people on a day trip to a local town via train, and the group was grateful that he organized everything so well. But that was only the start.
The group then asked if Tom would take the lead organizing another trip. Compared to this new task, the day trip was small potatoes. In this case, this new trip was to be of some distance and over several days. Keeping track of who was going, how they would get there, where they would stay and how they would be fed, and even to the logistics of how and when they paid (and who paid and who hadn’t yet) takes the organizational abilities of something resembling the D-Day landings in complexity often. But Tom proved up to the task. He put it all together for them.
And the people who went on the trip were thrilled. Tom even had the foresight to create vouchers for the group to use in the hotels in which they stayed as payment for the food they ordered. He had pre-arranged this with the establishments before the trip, you see, and this idea meant that the travelers didn’t have to carry cash with them on the trip. Upon their return, the group thanked Tom profusely. They asked if he would organize other, longer, and more complex trips for them. Tom hadn’t considered a career as a travel agent before, but, after figuring in a percentage of the cost for each person on the trip as a payment for his services, Tom ended up making pretty good money. So, almost by accident Tom became a travel agent. He and his son registered their new business, setting up shop in London. Soon, he was escorting and selling tours around the world.
You might think that the world is filled with travel agencies and that between them and the internet, Tom would find that the competition for clients would be fierce. But, you’d be wrong. You see, this was 1865, and there were no travel agents.
Thomas Cook was the first one.
The Rest of the Story 